


cabin fever

by hydrochaeris



Series: ransom and holster 'verse [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, boys being soft and stupid and in love, i wrote this like two months ago but i just found it so...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 11:11:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8100235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrochaeris/pseuds/hydrochaeris
Summary: Holster misses his boyfriend.





	

Today is one of those horrible days that Holster has to go more than an hour without Ransom, due this time to some biology group project. Getting jealous of Ransom’s group members is definitely below Holster, but getting bored and lonely without his best friend—his _boyfriend_ , he has to remind himself—is not. There’s a stupid knot of frustration slowly winding its way through his chest, too, because Ransom had said it’d take three hours and it’s steadily approaching four. Not that Holster has been doing nothing save for staring at the minutes tick by since Ransom left the attic. He’s also gotten himself a glass of water, and climbed up to Ransom’s bunk to breathe in the scent of him left on his pillow. See? He’s _totally_ managing this.

Holster lets out a loud, stretching yawn and resists the urge to check the clock for what he knows would be the fourth time this minute. Normally he’d just bingewatch TV shows that Ransom hates. For some reason, though, it doesn’t feel the same without Ransom there beside him, rolling his eyes as Holster says every iconic line in time with the character, stealing kisses and cuddling him when Holster starts getting emotional about subplots and Easter eggs. He’s usually much better about this. He is. It’s just he’s done all his homework and most of his studying and it’s cold outside and he fucking wants his best friend, okay? Holster scoots so his head and shoulders dangle off the top bunk, so he has a clear view of the door. He’s suddenly very glad that Ransom persuaded him to put in his god-awful contact lenses today, because in this position Holster’s glasses would’ve fallen and cracked for sure.

He doesn’t like feeling all alone and pitiful like this. Singing would definitely cheer him up—singing is what Ransom would tell him to do, if Ransom were here right now. They’d harmonize, Ransom singing the melody and Holster going into a higher key, and Ransom would smile at him and—

The door opens, and Holster nearly falls backward off the fucking bed.

“Rans?”

“Hey, man.” Ransom’s beautiful face is upside down and that needs to be fixed right the fuck now. Holster twists around, leaps off the bed, and lets Ransom tackle him to the floor, not even bothering to wrestle back.

“Bad day,” Holster says, muffled in Ransom’s chest. He feels worse for even bringing it up, even though that’s what he and Ransom always do with each other when they’re feeling like shit.

“Yeah? What’s up?” Ransom sinks all the way onto Holster so he can nuzzle their noses together and Holster can breathe him in—his real right-here Ransom scent, not the fragmented smell left behind in his pillowcase. He shrugs as much as he can with Ransom on top of him.

“You were gone almost four hours.” He hates how his voice gets a little petulant at the end. Ransom looks at him a little suspiciously before scanning his face completely. Holster tenses beneath him, tries to look away. It doesn’t typically make him uncomfortable when Ransom reads his thoughts. He’s not sure why it’s different right now. His nose wrinkles of its own accord and, abruptly, the uncomfortable feeling is gone. Ransom is staring down at him with concern.

“You gotta tell me, Holtzy.”

“Huh?”

“You gotta tell me when you’re not down with me doing the, like, telepathy thing. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t,” says Holster, partially because he wants the lines in Ransom’s forehead gone, mostly because it’s the truth. “I—sorry—it’s been a weird day.”

Ransom is still looking at him, considering. Holster is about to read his mind and figure out that look when Ransom kisses him. His eyes close involuntarily and he arches into it a little, can feel his heart beat a slower, better rhythm the deeper the kiss gets. This is never the broken thing with them. Holster’s hands grab Ransom’s waist and pull down, one of Ransom’s hands finds Holster’s hair, the other cups his jaw.

“Love you,” says Ransom when they part. His tone is a little guarded. Holster doesn’t worry about it, though—he probably should, but he can’t. His body is singing with the sweet relief that Ransom is with him in almost every sense of the world. Ransom stands and Holster scrambles to follow him.

“Your glasses are super cute,” Ransom says with zero preamble, “but with your contacts I can see your eyes a lot better.”

Holster doesn’t know what to say. “I salsa your face” is what ends up coming out of his mouth, and it makes them both grin.

“That’s from one of your stupid shows, isn’t it?”

“Duh. We watched that episode!”

“You gotta know by now that whenever we watch your shows, I zone out by staring at your ridiculously handsome face and imagining the inside of your cells.”

“Sexts from a biology major,” Holster quips. He still blushes, though. He knows, kind of, that he’s pretty pretty by some standards that Shitty would call Eurocentric bullshit, but it’s always different coming from the one person he adores the most, the one person actually _cares_ about looking good for.

Ransom is giving him the considering look again.

“Bro, get your boots and jacket on. We’re going for a walk.”

-

The minute they step into the sharp winter air, Holster feels the knot in his chest unwinding itself, loosening enough that he starts breathing easier, though he hadn’t realized he was having trouble breathing in the first place. They trek through the snow surrounding the Haus that no one has yet bothered to shovel and get fairly far along the street without saying anything.

“Better?” Ransom says, just when Holster realizes they’re headed in the direction of Annie’s.

“You know what’s good for me,” he concedes, squeezing Ransom’s gloved hand in his bare one.

“Not freezing your fingers off is good for you,” Ransom says pointedly, though his smile is soft and Holster just has to kiss the corner of his mouth.

“It’d be better if you took off your gloves too. Body heat is more functioning in the nude.”

“You sound exactly like Shitty.” Ransom interlocks their fingers and pulls Holster against him enough that their shoulders knock. “How long were you in the attic, anyway?”

Holster flushes and looks at his feet. “However long you were gone.”

Ransom just hums, nonjudgmental. “That stale haunted air is no good for breathing for four hours, love.”

“I got myself a glass of water! I was thriving and hydrated!”

Ransom gives him a look.

“Okay, I was miserable without your enchanting company,” Holster says, pouting. He leans his head on Ransom’s shoulder, even though several incidents involving lampposts have proven this a bad way to walk in the past. “I dunno, it’s not this bad usually. Today I didn’t even want to see another person if they weren’t you. Or at least if you weren’t there in addition to the person who wasn’t you.” He pauses, then adds, “Love.”

Ransom kisses him on the forehead, lips barely grazing his hairline.

“You’re good at taking care of me. Tell me when you need me to take care of you, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Holster says quietly, or at what is probably a normal volume for someone who doesn’t project as naturally as he does. “You made an Excel for that, didn’t you? ‘Ways I Can Help Holster (Based On His Current Mood).’ ”

“And it totally worked,” says Ransom. “For example, today. Mood: irritated at lack of me. Way to help: no longer be lacking.” He’s kind of joking, then his face goes serious. “Actually, it was more like Mood: cabin fever. Way to help: break Holster out of his partially self-inflicted semi-metaphorical cabin.”

“You sound like Johnson.”

Ransom shrugs Holster’s head off his shoulder gently and puts an arm around his waist instead. They’re still basically walking hip-to-hip.

“Love you.”

“Love you too,” Holster says. He lets Ransom read his thoughts when he says it, lets him know he means it. They aren’t singing, but they’ve found their harmony all the same.

 

**Author's Note:**

> this is all corny af but whatever, the fandom needs more holsom fic that isn't about them getting together and more about them being happy and soft and in love so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ also if you want you can pretend it happens in the same universe as my other holsom fic but it's cool if you just read it as a standalone.


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